US senate passes defence bill that strips trans healthcare from kids of military personnel

The US senate has passed a bill – The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year – that will increase annual military spending to $895 billion (£712.5 billion).

However, it also contains a provision that blocks coverage of gender-affirming care for the transgender children of members of the armed services.

It is the most recent iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual piece of legislation which outlines military spending and budgets.

The NDAA has not failed to pass congress since it was first introduced more than 60 years ago.

Alongside pay rises for military personnel, and significant funding for new battleships, the bill also contains an anti-trans clause which will prevent Tricare – the US military’s healthcare plan for those in service – from issuing “medical interventions” to those under the age of 18 “for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilisation.”

Lesbian Democrat Tammy Baldwin, a senator from Wisconsin, said she had always voted for the NDAA but could not do so this year because of the provision.

“It’s flat-out wrong to put this in this bill and take away a service member’s freedom to make that decision for their families,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that some of our colleagues decided to force this harmful provision in, because, otherwise, I would have been proud to support it.”

The bill’s passage comes just weeks before president-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, having promised to reintroduce a ban on transgender people serving in the US military “on day one”.

Trump’s first transgender military ban was imposed in 2019 but overturned by president Joe Biden in 2021. 

Jaymes Black, the chief executive of The Trevor Project, a teen suicide-prevention not-for-profit organisation, said: “It is wholly disappointing to see congress use a must-pass annual defence-spending bill as a vehicle to deny health care to transgender young people with parents in the military.

“This provision is straightforward discrimination that denies essential healthcare for military families with transgender children, while allowing access to the very same care for all other military families. Personal medical decisions ought to be made between families, young people and their medical providers, not by the government.

“Preventing the families of service members from obtaining medically necessary care is a betrayal of our nation’s promise to our military, denying service members the very freedoms they risk their lives to protect, including the freedom to decide what is best for the health and well-being of their children.

“It is understandable for people who do not personally know a transgender person to have questions about what it means to be trans, or how healthcare for trans youth works, but it violates American values of fairness and service for a small group of lawmakers to force a flat-out ban on essential healthcare for thousands of military families into what is typically bipartisan must-pass legislation.”

The Trevor Project urged lawmakers to listen to military families who will be affected and to oppose further bans on trans healthcare.

A group representing LGBTQ+ service people and veterans, the Modern Military Association of America, described the approval of the legislation as a “direct attack on military families and a betrayal of our nation’s promise to those who serve”.

Rachel Branaman, the association’s executive director, said: “This federal prohibition puts countless already-vulnerable families in precarious legal, financial and logistical positions. While the NDAA includes benefits like pay raises and access to childcare, these will be negated for families forced to pay out-of-pocket for essential care or travel to access it.

“The state-by-state approach to basic human rights and healthcare access is fundamentally incompatible with the realities of military life. Unlike other Americans, military families do not have the luxury of choosing where they live.”

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